Although I haven’t been as active in my blog as much as I wanted to, no thanks to Plurk, I do check my blog and find out if there are any new comments awaiting moderation. I’m also currently developing a new theme for my blog, one which I will not be releasing publicly, yet, and I’m planning on deploying it by the end of the month. It’s almost done, but it would still need some testing to see if there are any bugs that pop-up after deployment. For now, it’s still under development but it is very close to being deployed. One of the main hang-ups of this new theme is the name. I still haven’t decided on what name I will dub this theme. Suggestions are welcome, and highly appreciated no matter how juvenile or mundane it may be.

As for comments awaiting moderation, there were quite a few that made me doubt the intention of the commenter. One of the comments that are currently awaiting moderation, one that I don’t think I’ll approve is shown in the picture below.

It seems to be a valid comment. Desperate, maybe, but still worthy of approval. What made me think twice of approving the comment is that the entry the comment was added to was published years ago. The comment may be related to the entry, but paranoia bells started ringing when I think about comment spammers and their methods, however desperate it may seem, that this may be one of those unorthodox methods that might be implemented by them blog defilers.

What my paranoia senses were telling me was that this commenter, bot or not, is trying to get their email address approved, so that when they add comment spam, it gets automatically approved. It makes sense. At least, for me. Leaving out the paranoia, the commenter may simply be bored out of their wits and is trying to reach out to get someone touch them, literally or figuratively speaking.

And another blogging oddity that I noticed concerns WordPress. It’s really not a big deal because it’s not happening anymore, but when I refreshed the admin page, it was prompting me that there’s a new version available and that I should upgrade my installation. I would have done what it was suggesting, but what it was prompting me to do was to upgrade to the version that I already have. See the screenshot below.

Weird.

The next release of WordPress has come early, about a month earlier than the projected timeline. It is a welcome upgrade, though, since it boasts a lot of new features, but not as heavy as 2.5 was. Current release is WordPress 2.6 beta 1.

One of the notable features of 2.6 is the Google Gears implementation. Users will now have the ability to work offline when there is no Internet connection and will automatically synchronize the files that were changed once they are connected again. Geniosity.co.za has a better write-up of 2.6′s new feature.

There’s also the Post Revisioning feature which allows you to go back to a previous revision of your entry if in case you digress too far away from the subject of your post and need to go back and review what you were actually trying to convey. This was something that made me think about the bandwidth and database space, that it may consume a lot of. But the developers commented that it won’t really make a significant impact on the database and that it will only extend the auto-save feature.

You can also preview themes before you actually use it. There were a lot of updates to make your install more secure, and tons more to enhance the user experience. I wasn’t really expecting to be all this giddy waiting for 2.6 but after test-driving beta1, I just can’t help it.

Tentative date of release is July 14. Emphasis on tentative.

I have been meaning to post a review of Plurk ever since I joined the community, but procrastination got in the way, not to mention addiction to plurking and office work that it has been put off indefinitely.

Until now.

Plurkbuddy, Plurk’s bearer of good and/or bad news, recently announced that there will be a scheduled routine maintenance that will be happening on June 17, 2008 at 2300EST and will take an hour and a half to complete.

June 17, 2008 was also the date the Boston Celtics would face the Los Angeles Lakers reviving their age-old rivalry in Game 6 of the NBA Finals. The Boston Celtics won 131 – 92 in regulation.

The conspiracy theorist in me asks if this, Plurk’s scheduled downtime and Game 6 of the NBA Finals falling on the same date and almost the same time, is a coincidence or was the scheduling of the downtime deliberately done by Plurk? If it was a coincidence, Plurk’s the A-Team is lucky. If they did it on purpose, the A-Team is genius.

No matter, Plurk still has its ups and downs. Plurk is more focused on being more social because it promotes a sense of community by giving karma points to those who plurk.

Yes, karma. Plurk attempted to quantify a good deed by developing an algorithm to do simply just that. Plurk basically have emoticons and a qualifier that doesn’t count against the 140-character limit. When the user gets a certain amount of karma points, Plurk rewards them of exclusive emoticons, and other features.

However, Plurk is not a being of zen because it only counts the number of plurks you made, whether it be originals or responses. Plurk does not check for the quality of the content. And because of this, Plurk is being abused.

People who plurk to help others get good karma. People who want to get karma points, plurk. In this way does Plurk become a popularity contest.

The A-Team has documented how Plurk’s karma system works. The question is, has anyone ever read them?

Spamming other users will lower your karma

The above is self-explanatory, of course.

Inactivity for a long period will decrease your karma

Doing nothing is the same as letting something bad happen. Understandable.

Karma will be lowered if you request friendship and get rejected
Getting unfollowed by friends will lower your karma

Why would those two situations stated above happen?

Why on earth would you lose followers/friends? Why would anyone want to reject your request to be added as a friend when you have the cutest mug of all?

It all depends on the quality of your plurks. If you keep posting dancing bananas, various pictures of dancing bananas, and rants about not yet getting those dancing bananas, who in their right mind would want to follow your plurks. And not just bananas. A sane person can only read so much profanity in one day. I topped at 20. After that, I go ape-shit and cuss all day. Flood a Plurker’s timeline with profanity every second and you lose them as quickly as you posted your nth profanity plurk.

Did I go through the dancing-banana-obsession phase? Yes, and how. And after I got the dancing banana, it got old quickly.

But I’ve seen worse. Those who managed to stay cool and just wait for the karma points to come while simply lurking and occasionally replying gets a standing ovation from me. I wish I can do that.

I was addicted to Plurk, but now, the buzz is fading. The thrill is gone. The excitement, a distant echo slowly dissolving into nothingness. I am no longer an addict. I am a Plurker.

Etchos.

Peering behind the thick, layered curtains, Bob Wilson surveyed the streets below. The room he rented on the third floor of a hostel across the Convention Center had adequate space, enough for two consenting adults with only one thing in mind. Bob thought about it at first, but he pulled himself back from his baser instincts of reproduction, or more appropriately, fornication, as he reminded himself that he was there for one purpose only: to complete his objective. And the objective tonight is all about a very powerful CEO of an oil company who signed a contract too eagerly without the board’s consent. The board would have let it go, but they were unsatisfied with their cut, and was offended by how much more the CEO was going to get after the transaction. They decided to pull the trigger, literally, by calling Bob’s phone.

Bob never cared about oil companies and their execs. If he had his way, he would have shot every single one of them, including their puppets inside the government, but money also had its pull. And to continue doing what he did best, he needed support from others. Those others may not have the same morals Bob has, but it pays the bills, so to speak.

The street lamps were giving off its usual radiant glow, illuminating the roads and sidewalks where the occassional vehicle whizzed by. Passersby became onlookers as they passed a television shop beside the Convention Center displaying various brands of sets showing the same news channel. The short drizzle earlier made the pavement slick, but it only made it more humid, making the area hot and sticky. The airconditioning in the room was comforting, but Bob knew that once he went outside, he would sweat like a pig.

Then Bob saw a black 7-series BMW slowly making its way to the onramp of the Convention Center. It’s time, he thought. He turned and grabbed his coat and went to the door. His piece, silently resting in the holster on the small of his back. A porcelain knife hid quietly in an ankle sheath. A small pill, the means to an end, Bob silently hopes, rests within a small compartment at the bottom of his ring, hidden by his loosely closed fist. With luck, he wouldn’t even have to fire a shot. Bob hated the noise a gunshot makes, and the mess of using a knife. He hopes to slip the quickly-dissolving pill in one of the bottles inside the black Beamer. His only problem is the valet.

Bob quickly crossed the street and got next to the black Beamer’s driver side. He quickly rapped on the window signalling the valet to come out immediately. With a puzzled look, the valet looked at him, bewildered, and slowly reached for the door to open it and get out. It worked, Bob thought.

“Quickly now, your boss wants to see you about a scratch on the yellow Ferrari you parked earlier,” Bob said.

“What yellow Ferrari? I haven’t parked any yellow Ferraris today,” the valet answered.

“Not my problem if your boss thinks you did or didn’t, is it?” replied Bob.

“I swear, the old man is going senile. That dumb fuck,” the valet said as he slammed the door, storming away from the car and started heading to the valet office.

That was easy, Bob thought.

Bob looked on as the valet walked away from the car. He then quickly opened the door and got in. This is nice, he thought to himself. Then Bob quickly reached over to the passenger side where a bottled water rested. He then proceeded to open it up and dropped the pill. He watched as it fizzled, quickly dissolving in the water. The deed is done, he mused. Bob got out of the car, and as he opened the door, he saw a pair of shiny, black, wingtips staring back at him. He looked up and saw a face staring back at him, questioningly.

“Kept your seat warm for you, sir,” Bob quickly said. He was glad he thought of something to say quickly enough to not be suspected of anything.

“Then get the fuck out of the way,” the CEO said.

Bob did as he told and closed the door gently for the CEO. He then slowly walked away from the car, heading towards the valet office. Slowly, he veered away from his original path and rounded the corner where a cab was waiting. He got in the cab and told the driver to take him to his hostel, the one across the Convention Center. Surprised by his new customer, the cabbie asked Bob why he not walk over instead. Bob handed him a 50 and asked him to shut up and just drive. Surprised, the cabbie then stepped on the gas and, a few seconds after, parked just in front of the lobby of the hostel. Bob got out and then proceeded to his room. He raced through the stairs two, sometimes three, steps at a time. He quickly entered his room after repeatedly trying his keycard, which had success after seven times.

Bob didn’t bother to turn on the lights and immediately went and peered through a slit in the curtains. The car, with driver, was still where he left it. That’s a good sign. He waited there for a good ten minutes, watching the car. He kept waiting there after ten minutes, watching the car and the non-moving silhouette of the driver.

Then, movement.

Not inside the car, but one of the valets slowly approached the car. Bob looked on. The valet hesitantly tapped the window of the driver’s side of the car. No reaction. He tapped again with the same effect.

Bob decided to back away from the curtains and turned on the lights. He made sure that the chain lock and dead bolt on the door was fastened before he threw himself down on the bed. He reached for the TV’s remote control and turned it on and up. He then took his phone from his front pocket and sent a message to his contractor confirming the kill. As he pressed the send button, the distant wail of the ambulance became clearer and louder. Another day in the office, Bob thinks.

Tired of Twitter being down most of the time? Plurk instead. And get stars for inviting your friends.

Waking up randomly in the middle of the night for no particular reason isn’t one of his habits, but Bob Wilson, a corporate hitman, seemed to have developed this habit overnight. The past few days have shown him what a seedy and disgusting world these seemingly clean-shaven, suit-wearing, power grabbers live in. All for the sake of grabbing power. What the suits don’t know is that a movie was made about power and its accompanying responsibilities. Four contracts in three days for the same company, it was a busy week for Bob. A lot of greenbacks involved, but nonetheless, a busy week. And the week just started.

Bob saw a trend after talking with one of his clients. It all starts with gossip. Then it spreads uncontrollably. Witch hunts, speculation, and more gossip happens. And someone will finally ask somebody who knows someone about somebody who fixes corporate problems. When this happens, Bob’s phone rings. What he can’t believe is, after all the songs the Beatles made about love and setting aside differences and the number of people influenced by it, the animosity is still there. Everyone’s a fucked-up, prejudiced prick. No exceptions.

Bob tried to go back to sleep, but he couldn’t. All he could do was feel lethargic and lie in bed. He has no motivation whatsoever, to eat, to wash his face, nor to brush his teeth. It was all just a big blank sheet wrapped around his mind. Nothing is coming to him. No urge to check his phone for messages from a satisfied, or otherwise, customer. No urge to fire up his netbook and check for emailed inquiries on rates, etc. There was absolutely nothing. Well, except for the baser instincts of survival and reproduction. The soft, goose-down pillow was not helping, nor did the Tempur-pedic mattress helped at all. No matter how much he rolled over and tried to find the most comfortable position, his head did not produce any ideas. The question “what do I want?” kept going over and over and over in his head, never producing any single idea to answer it. The question then morphed into “what do I need?” producing the same results. Then the question became more specific as it changed to “what do I need to do right now?” that made him aware of his physical surroundings. He heard the soft hum of the air-conditioning unit near the base of the smoked-glass window on the east side of the room. The small table at the corner served as the resting place of his netbook and phone. At the opposite is the door to his closet-slash-armory. The north side, a wall of crimson red and nothing else, contrasting the south wall’s collage of various pictures and paintings, made him rethink why he painted it red.

Then instinct took over. He now knew what he needs to do, what needs to be done. He quickly got up from the bed and rushed to the door leading to his closet-slash-armory and opened it quickly. Sliding doors lined up the wall of this dual-purpose room. To the far end is another door that leads outside to the rest of the house, and the world. Quickly, Bob opens the door leading outside and rushes instinctively, knowingly, purposefully to a room of white tiles and the scent of antiseptic.

Waves of joy and pure bliss rush over Bob. A sudden shiver runs up his spine and shook his whole body as he finished.

He made it.